Unable to
find what they were looking for in Archaeopteryx, the advocates
of the theory of evolution pinned their hopes on some other
fossils in the 1990s and a series of reports of so-called
"dino-bird" fossils appeared in the world media. Yet it was
soon discovered that these claims were simply misinterpretations,
or, even worse, forgeries.

The first dino-bird claim was the story of "feathered
dinosaur fossils unearthed in China," which was put forward
in 1996 with a great media fanfare. A reptilian fossil called
Sinosauropteryx was found, but some paleontologists
who examined the fossil said that it had bird feathers, unlike
modern reptiles. Examinations conducted one year later, however,
showed that the fossil actually had no structure similar to
a bird's feather. A Science article titled "Plucking
the Feathered Dinosaur" stated that the structures named as
"feathers" by evolutionary paleontologists definitely had
nothing to do with feathers:

Exactly 1 year ago,
paleontologists were abuzz about photos of a so-called "feathered
dinosaur," which were passed around the halls at the annual
meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology. The Sinosauropteryx
specimen from the Yixian Formation in China made the front
page of The New York Times, and was viewed by some as confirming
the dinosaurian origins of birds. But at this year's vertebrate
paleontology meeting in Chicago late last month, the verdict
was a bit different: The structures are not modern feathers,
say the roughly half-dozen Western paleontologists who have
seen the specimens. ...Paleontologist Larry Martin of Kansas
University, Lawrence, thinks the structures are frayed collagenous
fibers beneath the skin-and so have nothing to do with birds.138

A yet more sensational case
of dino-bird hype broke out in 1999. In its November 1999
issue, National Geographic published an article about
a fossil specimen unearthed in China which was claimed to
bear both bird and dinosaur features. National Geographic
writer Christopher P. Sloan, the author of the article, went
so far as to claim, "we can now say that birds are theropods
just as confidently as we say that humans are mammals." This
species, which was said to have lived 125 million years ago,
was immediately given the scientific name Archaeoraptor
liaoningensis.139

National Geographic's great hit, the perfect
"dino-bird." Archaeoraptor soon turned out to be a hoax.
All other "dino-bird" candidates remain speculative.

However, the fossil was a fake and was skillfully
constructed from five separate specimens. A group of researchers,
among whom were also three paleontologists, proved the forgery
one year later with the help of X-ray computed tomography.
The dino-bird was actually the product of a Chinese evolutionist.
Chinese amateurs formed the dino-bird by using glue and cement
from 88 bones and stones. Research suggests that Archaeoraptor
was built from the front part of the skeleton of an ancient
bird, and that its body and tail included bones from four
different specimens.

The interesting thing is that
National Geographic published a high-profile article
about such a crude forgery-and, moreover, used it as the basis
for claiming that "bird evolution" scenarios had been verified-without
expressing any doubts or caution in the article at all. Dr.
Storrs Olson, of the famous Smithsonian Institute Natural
History Museum in the USA, later said that he warned National
Geographic beforehand that this fossil was a fake, but
that the magazine management totally ignored him. According
to Olson, "National Geographic has reached an all-time low
for engaging in sensationalistic, unsubstantiated, tabloid
journalism."140

In a letter he wrote to Peter Raven of National
Geographic, Olson describes the real story of the "feathered
dinosaur" hype since its launch with a previous National
Geographic article published in 1998 in a very detailed
way:

Prior to the publication of the article
"Dinosaurs Take Wing" in the July 1998 National Geographic,
Lou Mazzatenta, the photographer for Sloan's article, invited
me to the National Geographic Society to review his photographs
of Chinese fossils and to comment on the slant being given
to the story. At that time, I tried to interject the fact
that strongly supported alternative viewpoints existed to
what National Geographic intended to present, but it eventually
became clear to me that National Geographic was not interested
in anything other than the prevailing dogma that birds evolved
from dinosaurs.

Sloan's article takes the prejudice to
an entirely new level and consists in large part of unverifiable
or undocumented information that "makes" the news rather
than reporting it. His bald statement that "we can now say
that birds are theropods just as confidently as we say that
humans are mammals" is not even suggested as reflecting
the views of a particular scientist or group of scientists,
so that it figures as little more than editorial propagandizing.
This melodramatic assertion had already been disproven by
recent studies of embryology and comparative morphology,
which, of course, are never mentioned.

More importantly, however, none of the
structures illustrated in Sloan's article that are claimed
to be feathers have actually been proven to be feathers.
Saying that they are is little more than wishful thinking
that has been presented as fact. The statement on page 103
that "hollow, hairlike structures characterize protofeathers"
is nonsense considering that protofeathers exist only as
a theoretical construct, so that the internal structure
of one is even more hypothetical.

The hype about feathered dinosaurs in the
exhibit currently on display at the National Geographic
Society is even worse, and makes the spurious claim that
there is strong evidence that a wide variety of carnivorous
dinosaurs had feathers. A model of the undisputed dinosaur
Deinonychus and illustrations of baby tyrannosaurs are shown
clad in feathers, all of which is simply imaginary and has
no place outside of science fiction.

This revealing case demonstrates two important
facts. First, there are people who have no qualms about resorting
to forgery in an effort to find evidence for the theory of
evolution. Second, some highly reputable popular science journals,
which have assumed the mission of imposing the theory of evolution
on people, are perfectly willing to disregard any facts that
may be inconvenient or have alternative interpretations. That
is, they have become little more than propaganda tools for
propagating the theory of evolution. They take not a scientific,
but a dogmatic, stance and knowingly compromise science to
defend the theory of evolution to which they are so strongly
devoted.

Another important aspect of the matter is that
there is no evidence for the thesis that birds evolved from
dinosaurs. Because of the lack of evidence, either fake evidence
is produced, or actual evidence is misinterpreted. In truth,
there is no evidence that birds have evolved from another
living species. On the contrary, all discoveries show that
birds emerged on the earth already in full possession of their
distinctive body structures.

LATEST EVIDENCE:
OSTRICH STUDY REFUTES THE DINO-BIRD STORY

Dr. Feduccia: His new
study is enough to bury the 'dino-bird" myth

The latest blow to the "birds evolved
from dinosaurs" theory came from a study made on the
embryology of ostriches.

Drs. Alan Feduccia and Julie Nowicki
of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
studied a series of live ostrich eggs and, once again,
concluded that there cannot be an evolutionary link
between birds and dinosaurs. EurekAlert, a scientific
portal held by the American Association for the The
Advancement of Science (AAAS), reports the following:

Drs. Alan Feduccia and Julie Nowicki
of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill...
opened a series of live ostrich eggs at various stages
of development and found what they believe is proof
that birds could not have descended from dinosaurs...

Whatever the ancestor of birds was, it
must have had five fingers, not the three-fingered
hand of theropod dinosaurs," Feduccia said... "Scientists
agree that dinosaurs developed 'hands' with digits
one, two and three... Our studies of ostrich embryos,
however, showed conclusively that in birds, only digits
two, three and four, which correspond to the human
index, middle and ring fingers, develop, and we have
pictures to prove it," said Feduccia, professor and
former chair of biology at UNC. "This creates a new
problem for those who insist that dinosaurs were ancestors
of modern birds. How can a bird hand, for example,
with digits two, three and four evolve from a dinosaur
hand that has only digits one, two and three? That
would be almost impossible." 1

In the same report, Dr. Freduccia also
made important comments on the invalidity-and the
shallowness-of the "birds evolved from dinosaurs"
theory:

"There are insurmountable problems with
that theory," he [Dr. Feduccia] said. "Beyond what
we have just reported, there is the time problem in
that superficially bird-like dinosaurs occurred some
25 million to 80 million years after the earliest
known bird, which is 150 million years old."

If one views a chicken skeleton and a
dinosaur skeleton through binoculars they appear similar,
but close and detailed examination reveals many differences,
Feduccia said. Theropod dinosaurs, for example, had
curved, serrated teeth, but the earliest birds had
straight, unserrated peg-like teeth. They also had
a different method of tooth implantation and replacement."2

This evidence once again reveals that
the "dino-bird" hype is just another "icon" of Darwinism:
A myth that is supported only for the sake of a dogmatic
faith in the theory.